Cladistic language concepts

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
With respect to using the term evolution for linguistic change I am
inclined to think it is appropriate, but of course its association with
the onward-upward character that goes with the term in biology must then
be avoided. As I see it, one of the main factors in linguistic change and
perhaps the main factor is the drive for efficiency in communication which
is dialectically resisted by the need for clarity so that efficiency does
not actually increase andthe actual level of clarity does not change.
Since however change is constant, I believe the term evolution is
appropriate.
 
I believe your characterization of mutual intelligibility as being an
arbitrary criterion is a misconception. After all it concerns
intercommunication, the primary function of language. The difficulty with
mutual intelligibility lies rather in applying it and improvements in that
area could be achieved if the importance of distinguishing languages from
each other could reach the level of attracting financial support. Failing
that we will have to get along with making judgments as we have until now.
 
As for entropy it could not be expected to be found in the structure of a
language since the energy input to maintain clarity prevents observable
change in the direction of disorganization. However within a language
regarded as a closed system, there is (for all practical purposes)
observable changes in the direction of disorganization in
dialectalization as diversification tending toward the shattering of a
language. The opposing force is the rate of interlocution; as that rate
is high it militates against diversification and if it is high
enough, promotes homogeneity and when it is low or decreases is
accompanied by increased dialectalization and if it reaches zero, may
be followed by language fission.
 
 On Wed, 19 Aug 1998,
bwald wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> With regard to the cladistic discussion I hope it is worth me noting a
> point where linguists most generally agree that biological and linguistic
> evolution seem to be quite different, even to the extent that some
> linguists discourage use of the term "evolution" for linguistic changes
> which are matters of consensus in linguistic studies, such as the changes
> from Old t o current English, or from Latin to the current Romance
> languages, among many other cases.  (Excluded from consideration is the
> evolution of language from "pre-language", an issue which is not at all a
> matter of agreement among linguists, and which has only recently reentered
> serious linguistic discussion after a long period of banishment).
>
> It is in the matter of selectional pressures disfavoring certain lines of
> evolution and favoring others at certain times.  It is a generally held
> principle of linguists that all languages as systems are equal to all other
> languages as communicative systems, and that, with the exception of
> auxiliary languages (not a speaker's first language, maybe nobody's first
> language, e.g., in the case of pidgins), change does not make a language
> more suitable for survival as a communicative device.  Linguists also do
> not have a notion of complexity that would presume that any language, as a
> total system, is more "complex" than any other language.  The same can
> certainly not be said of biological entities (a separate point from the
> "survival" one).
>
> It seems that biological diversification is not motivated by survival;
> selection for survival operates on the diversification.  The motivating
> factor seems to be changes in the entire bio-system, ultimately tied to
> physical (including chemical) changes in environment.   No telling how far
> into the universe that ultimately leads.  The closest analog for selection
> pressures in language seems to be social, and may involve the total
> replacement of one language by another, so that one language fails to
> survive, never because it could not adopt to the communicative demands put
> on it, but because it could not find a social niche to allow its
> continuation.  Thus, many languages have disappeared without current trace
> (except for borrowings from them into surviving languages), and this
> continues to happen to surviving languages for socio-economic reasons.  In
> general then, I think linguists could accept an analogy between instability
> and change in languages and life forms on the basis of not well understood
> interruptions in the continuity of systems as they are reproduced (in
> language through childhood and even later learning, in biology through
> changes in genetic coding), but do not find selectional pressures analogous
> in language and life forms.
>
> in particular, the following would not be found analogous by linguists.
> Ghiselin writes:
> >               Mutation is universal among genetic systems, and we
> >          know that it is necessary because were it not the second law
> >          of thermodynamics would be false.
>
> If I understand the law referred to have to do with the "entropy" of
> systems, languages do not show recognisable signs of loss of systematic
> orderliness as they change.  That follows from the consensus principle that
> languages are equally systematic at all stages of their evolution.  At the
> same time, many, perhaps most, linguists believe that there are favored
> systems, so that one change in a system can favor a subsequent one.
> Genetic research probably suggests some analogies, but it is my impression
> that factors outside the system shared by a set of organisms are more
> frequently called upon in explaining the directions of biological change
> than in explaining the directions of linguistic change.  Nevertheless, both
> linguists and biologists are concerned with internal constraints on
> possible directions of change, according to the principles by which the
> systems are organised.
>
> He continues:
> >          the universality of change may be a law of nature, and not just
> >          a matter of contingent, historical fact.
>
> Historical facts at the proper level of abstraction and "laws of nature"
> can be controversial as mutually exclusive philosophical alternatives.  It
> is not clear that social change is either more or less arbitrary than
> linguistic change.  Social change does seem to involve differences in the
> complexity of particular social systems, e.g., production of surplus and
> the rise of cities, technological change, etc.  But, as I said, the
> linguistic systems that linguists usually investigate, i.e., grammatical
> systems, do not seem to vary in complexity.  Subsystems of grammatical
> systems can indeed vary in complexity, but there seems to be a
> cross-linguistic balance of complexity when it comes to considering the
> interaction of sub-systems in the overall grammatical system of a language.
> Linguists do not agree on a basis to think otherwise.
>
> >               Switching to philosophy, one interesting point about
> >          how you conceptualize the problem is that you conceive of
> >          languages as systems in this sense.  They are concrete,
> >          particular things, with interactions among their parts, that
> >          evolve as such.  One way to characterize such a position is
> >          to say that it takes the individuality of languages very
> >          seriously.
>
> In the same way that biologists find the concept of individual species
> useful, though the criteria for membership in a set differ from language to
> biological species.  I think some respondents already discussed the
> commonality in terms of continuity (despite change) in successive members
> of a set.
>
> It is very easy for somebody who treats a whole
> >          as if it were its parts viewed atomistically to overlook
> >          such deeper connections.  That is part of the problem with
> >          those who want to think of languages as defined by mutual
> >          intelligibility.
>
> Mutual intelligibility is an arbitrary criterion for membership in a
> particular language set from a historical linguistic point of view, as you
> have been informed.  Continuity is the criterion used.  There is the level
> of species in biology at which a criterial discontinuity can be posited on
> the basis of ability to reproduce (cross-fertilise).  That seems to be a
> cleaner cut-off point than where mutual intelligibility decays.  Still,
> even on this list, we had recent discussion of the possibility that mutual
> intelligibility allows change to spread from one variety of a language to
> another, but that lack of mutual intelligibility blocks it.  That seems
> quite logical, and could be construed as analogous to cross-fertilisation.
> Its only weak point is that changes can spread across mutually
> unintelligible languages through the agency of intervening bilingualism,
> probably most often communal rather than isolated individuals.  That ends
> the analogy between mutual intelligibility and cross-fertilisation with
> respect to continuity in evolution.
>